Washington: Two Pakistani students were shot dead near Washington early on July 15 by unidentified gunmen. The local police are treating the shooting as robbery, but friends say the two could have been targeted because of their race.

Sair Saeed Butt, 26, and Hammad Chaudhry, 23, both from Lahore, were shot outside Butt's home in Prince George's Country, Maryland. Butt died in the ambulance and Chaudhry succumbed to his wounds in the hospital eight hours later.

A friend, Mohammed Tayyab, told 'Dawn' that Chaudhry had purchased a new car on July 14 and was "so excited that instead of waiting for the next day, he came over to Butt at three in the morning to show him the car".

While the two friends were looking at Chaudhry's car, another car came around and four or five American teenagers came out. Pointing guns at them, they ordered them to raise their hands, searched their pockets "and then simply started shooting at them, without any provocation", said an eyewitness.

The eyewitness, an American friend of the two Pakistanis who requested anonymity, said they first shot Butt in the arm. The single bullet pierced through his chest and he fell on the ground, bleeding profusely.

Then they fired three shots at Chaudhry, all in the stomach. Another witness, who watched the shootings from a nearby flat, called the emergency police.

After the shooting, the teenagers "simply drove away, they did not even bother to search Chaudhry's brand new car. If robbery was the motive, they could have stolen the car, looked for money, taken away his car parked nearby. But they made no such attempts. They simply drove away after killing the two Pakistanis," said Tayyab.

Other friends of the two Pakistani students also said that because there were no attempts to rob anyone, they found it difficult to understand why the police were treating it as a robbery.

"It seems as if they were killed because the killers did not like their looks or the colour of their skin. This is a hate crime," said a friend.

Police, however, disagreed.

ANI